Amid all the back-and-forth about Char versus Gato versus whomever, I'm reminded of a feature I wrote a few years back for the never-published second issue of the Gundam fanzine Julie and I were working on. Here's a super-digest version...

In essence, I broke down the ranks of Gundam ace pilots into four categories. The premise was that any experienced pilot can kill off plebes with little effort, but their tactics for battling other veterans were quite distinct. Here are the primary types, each with a cutesy name:

Steamrollers are aggressive types who favor in-your-face frontal assaults, raining blows on their enemy to keep them off-balance. Experienced pilots can almost always dodge a frontal attack, but if you keep pressing the attack, sooner or later they might slip up and take a hit. Char, for all his acrobatics, basically sticks to this tactic; ZZ's Rakan Dakaran, overall a mediocre pilot, gets a lot of mileage out of it.

Bushwackers are cunning, devious pilots who eschew easy-to-evade frontal attacks in favor of taking potshots from the rear or other blind spots. When engaged in a duel, they try to wriggle out of it and drop out of the enemy's field of view so that they can come in from another direction and catch the foe off-guard. Frequently, bushwackers will sacrifice spare weapons as decoys, distracting the enemy so that they can ambush them from behind. Amuro Ray and Anavel Gato are masters of this technique.

Blitzers or snipers are similar to bushwackers, but lack the skill to escape a duel. Instead, they hide behind asteroids and colonies, popping up to take potshots at their targets, and try to avoid close combat and running battles at all costs. Camille Vidan, a textbook example, frequently has to be rescued by his sidekicks when he gets stuck in a duel and can't get away to launch surprise sniper attacks.

Pluggers - for want of a better term - are defensive players, who manage to stay calm and collected even under continuing attacks from bushwackers or steamrollers. By continually dodging and deflecting enemy attacks, they can tie up otherwise dangerous foes in time-wasting sparring matches, and may even be able to sneak in the occasional counterattack. This tactic is typically the province of secondary characters like Emma Sheen and Marbet Fingerhut, but V Gundam hero Usso Ebbing also fits the profile.

So that's my analysis, take it or leave it. As for the specific scenarios we've been discussing of late...

Gato, clearly, is a sneaky bastard just like Amuro. He uses spare weapons as decoys, and loves to somersault over his enemy so he can attack 'em from behind. As Amuro proves over and over again, these tactics are very effective against Char - the Red Comet is prone to distraction anyway, so once you become confident enough to weather his initial barrage of attacks, it's quite possible to drop out of his field of view and then hit him from his blind spot. Gato, like Yazzan Gable, is a rotten shot but a master at these sneaky tactics; I'd give him good odds of kicking Char's ass.

Kou Uraki, the talented amateur, tends to stay on the defensive when fighting Gato. His saving grace here is his superb reaction speed; every time Gato takes a swipe at him, he comes up with a last-minute evasive manuever, or sacrifices some part of his Gundam to deflect the blow. This pretty much nullifies Gato's efforts to catch him off-guard, since he can always save himself at the last second. Against the nonstop in-you-face barrage of Char, however, this nervous rookie would probably panic and get himself killed.

Amuro versus Gato would be pretty weird, since they'd both be obsessed with squirming away for a surprise attack. I have to wonder whether they'd ever finish the fight, or whether it might come down to a simultaneous surprise attack where the fastest draw wins...

I would be a bushwacker,staying back and taking sniper style shots at the enemy.My ultimate suit would of course be the Deep Striker,just image sitting back and sniping the opposition with shots from a range they couldn't reply to,sends a chill up the spine,dosen't it.

i would be considered mix of a bushwacker and a steamroller, sneaky little bastard so to speak but with a really happy trigger finger! my ideal mobile suit would be one packed to the teeth with weapon systems (Ex-S gundam or Heavyarms Kai come to mind-or the dendrobium!!!! ) more prodominatly the bushwacker though.

Steamroller - No doubts realy - played Heavygear 2 long enuf to know what too do and why - keep em busy and keep up the pressure - there are always plenty of bushwackers and pluggers to take advantage of any gaps the Steamrollers create - but at the end of the day someone has to engage - and that someone is me

I was a steamroller in Federation Vs. Zeon DX. I just tried to plow through the enemy. which sometimes didn't work out too well. especially since most of the time I was fighting bushwackers, which wouldn't have been so bad if my team mates would do what I tell them too and split up and divide the enemy, but noooooooooo they have to attack the same target I have and shoot me by mistake cause they can't aim to save their lives.

Dr. Mystico: I'll build a private army of super-apes and take over Cleveland!
Cosgrove: Don't you mean the world?
Dr. Mystico: I meant the world, yes. What did I say? Cleveland? Oh, I *always* do that!

In ZZ, Judo was a steamroller - while he'd dance in and out and avoid shots, Judo would love to get in and either melee with the ZZ's beam sabers or blow up opponents with the Double Beam Rifle. In the Zeta, he was much the same, although he wasn't so much a slugger but moreso the Muhammad Ali of MS combat - he'd duck in, hit hard and fast, zoom back out, and generally float around the battlefield as a hyper mobile steamroller of death.